When Havana Was on the Posters for Tours by Great Musicians

In the vast circuit of world music venues, Cuba no longer competes. It lacks any material attraction.

By Yoani Sanchez (14ymedio)

HAVANA TIMES – Last Saturday, in Miami, thousands of spectators sang along with Joaquín Sabina’s best-known songs. The Florida city hosted the concert of the Spanish composer on his farewell tour of the stage. Among the audience were many of those Cuban fans who once enjoyed his performances in Havana. Now, they are migrants in a foreign country and it is unlikely that the author of Hola y adiós will be allowed back into the Island.

In 2022, the Úbeda-born artist made his position clear: “I was a friend of the Cuban revolution and of Fidel Castro. But I am no longer, I cannot be.” Those words cost him a place on a list that the Castro regime constantly updates with artists who have dared to criticize its political model, the character of its leaders or the Communist Party. The list is very long and has changed over the years. It not only contains exiled Cuban musicians but once included figures such as José Feliciano, Roberto Carlos, Julio Iglesias, Raphael, Carlos Santana, more recently Fito Páez and even the Beatles themselves.

Among those censored were also songs by Joan Manuel Serrat, Mercedes Sosa and Miguel Ríos. Sometimes the scissors came because of the performer’s public attitude, other times, simply because the lyrics of one of their songs irritated the rigid Cuban commanders and generals. However, despite so many controls and suspicions, in those years performing in Havana, Varadero or Santiago de Cuba continued to be an aspiration of many international musicians, so being excluded from those concerts was considered a punishment.

However, time passed and everything changed. Now, performing in our country is of little interest to most of the great artists of the moment. Colombian Shakira is on the world tour Las mujeres ya no lloran [Women No Longer Cry] and the Cuban capital is conspicuous by its absence among the chosen destinations. Bad Bunny has not given any sign that he will rock, in the short or medium term, the seats of the Karl Marx theater or the Ciudad Deportiva de La Habana. The voices of Rosalía, Ed Sheeran, Lady Gaga or Taylor Swift have not been heard live in any of the concert halls on the Island.

The reason for these absences is not only the political exclusions carried out by the regime. There is also an economic motivation. In the wide circuit of musical venues worldwide, Cuba no longer competes. It lacks any material appeal. In what currency should tickets be charged so that the artist can collect some income from their show? The Island has also lost its appeal as a stopover to gain prestige or a name; rather, it is quite the opposite. Singing at the National Theater or the Martí can now be seen as an act of blindness to the excesses of a dictatorship and an act of gross complicity with a government that has more than a thousand political prisoners.

That is why, and for many other reasons, Joaquín Sabina sang in Miami and not in Havana last Saturday: not only because they might not let him enter the island, but also because most of his audience is already abroad.

Translated by Translating Cuba.

çRead more from Cuba here on Havana Times.